Shooting Both Ways
Do you shoot both ways? By that, I mean - do you shoot a horizontal (landscape) photo and automatically turn your camera to shoot a vertical (portrait) version? If not, it may be time to get in the habit.
If you are shooting stock you must always keep the desgners in mind. By shooting both ways you will keep your buyers satisfied by providing an image that fits their requirements. Often a designer has a very specific space to fill with an image and if they can't visualize your horizontal image on their vertical magazine cover, your fabulous photograph will be passed over.
I recently added the following two photos of winter wheat to my portfolio.
Agricultural images have not proven to be in high demand. I do find though, that if one sells, often the other will sell at the same time. In some cases, the designer may not be certain which photo would work best for them and you may benefit from two sales instead of one.
When I shot these winter wheat images it was a very windy, and extremely bright day. I fired about 30 shots, unsure if I could trust my viewfinder that I had used a high enough shutter speed. In the end I wound up with several good choices, but in this case, I chose to upload only two photos of my subject - one each way. All of the agencies accepted both, except 123rf who accepted one and rejected the other as "too similar".
In my experience, it does not serve you well to upload several photos that are essentially the same. Some agencies, like Dreamstime or Albumo, actually increase the selling price of a photo once it has reached a certain number of sales (which increases your earnings). If you have too many similar photos, it may take you much longer to reach the next sales level on any of these images.
LuckyOliver, on the other hand, encourages you to upload several similar images and angles. At the time of writing, LuckyOliver doesn't reward high selling photos with a sales increase, so having more similars on LuckyOliver will not hurt your ultimate earnings potential. You may even have the benefit of multiple sales when the buyer cannot choose between offerings.
If you are shooting stock you must always keep the desgners in mind. By shooting both ways you will keep your buyers satisfied by providing an image that fits their requirements. Often a designer has a very specific space to fill with an image and if they can't visualize your horizontal image on their vertical magazine cover, your fabulous photograph will be passed over.
I recently added the following two photos of winter wheat to my portfolio.
Agricultural images have not proven to be in high demand. I do find though, that if one sells, often the other will sell at the same time. In some cases, the designer may not be certain which photo would work best for them and you may benefit from two sales instead of one.
When I shot these winter wheat images it was a very windy, and extremely bright day. I fired about 30 shots, unsure if I could trust my viewfinder that I had used a high enough shutter speed. In the end I wound up with several good choices, but in this case, I chose to upload only two photos of my subject - one each way. All of the agencies accepted both, except 123rf who accepted one and rejected the other as "too similar".
In my experience, it does not serve you well to upload several photos that are essentially the same. Some agencies, like Dreamstime or Albumo, actually increase the selling price of a photo once it has reached a certain number of sales (which increases your earnings). If you have too many similar photos, it may take you much longer to reach the next sales level on any of these images.
LuckyOliver, on the other hand, encourages you to upload several similar images and angles. At the time of writing, LuckyOliver doesn't reward high selling photos with a sales increase, so having more similars on LuckyOliver will not hurt your ultimate earnings potential. You may even have the benefit of multiple sales when the buyer cannot choose between offerings.
Lorraine, as a designer I think you're right on the money with this post. I don't envy photographers for having to tread the line between framing the most beautiful shot and taking the most usable shot. sadly they are so often just not the same. I've seen so many gorgeous images on stock sites I just can't use, either because the shot axis is wrong or the cropping makes me insane.
I can crop but I can't uncrop!
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Hi Sabrina! Thanks for stopping by and for your words. I've enjoyed your new blogs on Lucky Oliver!
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